TODD SHIRLEY, LPC

Licensed Professional Counselor
Counseling in Downingtown, PA

Family-Centered Therapy for Teens

Helping families support and empower teens struggling with anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation to build trust, gain confidence, and find hope.

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Specialized Family Therapy For Struggling Teens

Attachment based family therapy (ABFT) offers a lens to help teens and their families make sense of their experiences and struggles.  This branch of therapy helps elicit motivation for positive changes while preparing households for those changes. While focusing on the the adolescent who struggles, it is a holistic systemic approach to helping.

ABFT has made the most sense to me as a therapist. Across many years of working with teens, common elements appeared across their stories; they want to feel heard, encouraged, and safe. Caring parents are often left feeling confused and frustrated because their children (who have become young adults) don’t feel these things despite a variety of life circumstances and help as parents. 

Too many times adolescents can feel like they are to blame for things. Feelings of worthlessness, being lost, and being a burden to others creep up when they should be celebrated. Because of this, resistance to therapy is common and understandable.

An individual enters into adolescence to find that things have changed without any negotiation. Parents are still parents, but they somehow seem different. Sometimes they are less available for support and reassurance while elementary school gets swapped for a pseudo high school where grades have a new meaning and weight. With no rhyme or reason, a teen’s friends may turn into enemies or become the object of intense attraction. The common denominator for these changes is (or was) the person facing them. But, changing as a person doesn’t feel compatible or fair while navigating a changing world. 

Now more than ever, young adults face unsettling times and those sought after feelings of comfort and being enough are difficult to come by.  An increasingly competitive academic and athletic culture combined with decreased social connection, inflammatory online behavior, and scary news headlines all work to complicate the normal challenges of such formative years. As a parent or caregiver of a teen, it can be difficult to find help. Waiting lists are long. Clicking with a therapist is not guaranteed.

As a licensed professional counselor, I work within the community I care for and live in by offering individual and family therapy to address a wide range of mental health concerns facing teens today. I offer convenient evening and weekend appointment times.

To help determine if I would be a good fit for you or a teen you take care of, check out my About Me, About My Approach  page or schedule a complimentary 15 minute “meet and greet” consultation by clicking here.

I also work with adults through individual and couples/family therapy, but successful work with teens typically is a hybridization of individual and family work.  To hear more about my therapeutic approach, access the services page at the top of this screen.